We flush a lot of things down the toilet. You know, the obvious ones. But drugs like cocaine are also going down the drain, and into our waterways. That's changing the animals that live in it.
It's definitely present in most ecosystems on Earth now, unfortunately. For only sort of really starting to scratch the surface and blood standing. The potential consequences is that. Forget cocaine beer.
Learn about cocaine salmon on shortwave in the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Planet Money from NPR. OK, campers, rides, and shine. And don't forget your booties, because it's cold out there today.
It's cold out there every day. What is this? Miami Beach? Well, not hard, we've got the big question on everybody's lips.
They're chopped lips. On their chapped lips, that's right. Do you think Phil will come out and see his shadow? Yep, as people gather for a ritual of studied absurdity, our furry forecaster prepares to tell us whether we're in for six more weeks of winter.
Planet Money. Planet Money. Wait, Eric, is the radio talking to us? It is.
Is that also a chang? Yep. All things considered host? Tis eye.
Listen here. You have to save us, because we are stuck in a news loop every February second. We covered this groundhog. And no one remembers anything else from that day.
Oh, that is true. That is true. Yeah, I don't think I can tell you a single non-groundhog thing that's ever happened on February second. Yeah, no.
Phil sucks the air out of the whole news cycle, isn't he? Oh, no. This is our curse. And you know what?
Now it is your curse, Planet Money, because we are stuck in this news cycle until you can find the perfect Groundhog Day story. Oh, like the movie Groundhog Day. That's what we're doing with the guy wakes up in the same day over and over until he can break the mysterious curse. Yes, yes, yes.
Exactly. And you know what? The only way to break this curse is for Planet Money to find the perfect Groundhog Day story, something that nothing to do with actual Groundhogs, something that happened on some February second, something that changed the economy forever. Oh, no problem.
We can bang this out right now. Slash wiki slash February second ad up. Buh-duh-boom. Look who was born on Groundhog Day, 1905.
Happy birthday. I'm Rand. So easy. So easy.
Hello, welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone. I'm Eric Ferris. And perhaps no birth has reverberated through the economy more than I'm Rand.
Author of controversial but influential texts. Muse, a former Fed Chair. Alan Grinch. Oh.
Uh, I guess it looks like the Groundhog gods think there are plenty of I'm Rand stories already? Uh, that's probably fair. I mean, listen, they're picky. And to be honest, I don't know exactly what they want.
So sorry. I guess throw some more stories at the wall and good luck. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Eric Ferris.
I'm Kenny Malone. And today on the show, I guess that's what we're going to figure out here. Yeah, what? Important economic story happens on some February seconds in history.
Any February seconds. How hard could this be? We have thousands of years of February seconds. Surely our future selves won't regret signing up for this bizarre challenge, Erica.
Sure. All right. All right. We get it.
It can be hard to keep up with all the new movies on streaming services. How do you tell the good ones worth watching from the bad? Or the silly ones you can laugh along with, or at? On NPR's pop culture happy hour, we're recommending some fun movies you may have missed.
Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. OK. Our mission. Find a story about something that changed the economy forever, something that occurred on some February second.
Any February second through history. We began our search with us. First the news in Diane Diamond. The old NPR archives, February second from decades ago, so much groundhog coverage.
According to the furry forecast, since 1887, every February. I'm predicting groundhog of the country. The Pennsylvania Crown. I'm trying to run this girl with dreams and his head all sprayed in time.
Is that what you call it? Of course we had a groundhog song. On brand delightful, not helpful, though, with the mission to find some non-groundhog, groundhog day story. And so our team started googling frantically.
And then we met up with what we found. Can we clap? Clap. All right, how's everybody doing?
Has everybody? We've been doing nothing but researching for like three straight hours. Turns out our team how drenched up some interesting things. Yeah, yeah.
February second 1709, the real life Robinson Crusoe was rescued from the real life Desert Island or whatever. On February second 1876, Baseball's National League was formed. Planet Money producer Dave Blanchard told us that he'd been digging into local newspaper archives and discovered that in 1952, there was a groundhog day heist in which a Chicago magician named Eddie Cott's was the victim of a very specific kind of magical robbery. The list of thieves goods includes one rabbit, five opossums, one raccoon, two ferrets, three guinea pigs, 50 white rats, and 25 homing pigeons.
What? Were there possums in magic shows? That seems risky. There were also four skunks, which the thieves did not steal, apparently, which was my decision.
I mean, hello and welcome to Planet Money today on the show, the black market for stolen magic possum. You know, that's fair. It says, if Erica, the groundhog gods know when we don't have enough material to keep stretching out a story. Very convenient.
Yes. And maybe the gods want something more obscure than just Google results. After all, the best planet money episodes, a little deeper cut than just top line Google. And then we thought, you know what's full of little known stories from specific dates?
Diaries. Diaries. What about diaries from important historical figures? And it wasn't long before we came across an article from Smithsonian Magazine titled John Quincy Adams, kept a diary and didn't skim upon the details.
We needed the non-skimped details. Good afternoon. Adam Pivers with the Massachusetts Historical Society. This is Sarah.
Hey, Sarah. This is Kenny Malone from NPR's Planet Money. We have a bit of a strange request for you, if your game. Sure.
We asked Sarah Martin if she could flip to some February second entries. What's the quints up to? Well, we call him the quints. What's the nickname?
Well, we use acronym, so we call him JQA. All right, JQA is good too. But the first one I can find written on February 2, 1782. This is during the American Revolution.
And so they are trying to win recognition from Russia. So a 14-year-old John Quincy Adams is at St. Petersburg, serving as secretary and interpreter on what became a failed diplomatic mission. And that's what this young boy is journaling about.
That's amazing. It's 14. He was 14 years old. Pretty good, pretty good.
But I don't know. What would the planet Money angle be here? No, but secret history of child labor during the Revolutionary War, maybe? I don't know.
I'm going to go with not really an economic story. But what about diaries from some of our most famous economists? Like what were they up to on February 2? Adam Smith can find any diaries.
No, no, Friedman couldn't find much there. But then there was David Ricardo, 1800's advocate for free trade famous for classical theory of comparative advantage. But the other thing he did that people don't know about is that you just wrote an incredible number of letters. So his correspondence is unreal.
This is Umberto Barretto. He is an economics professor who knows a lot about David Ricardo. And Umberto says he did find a letter dated February 2, 1822. And so we leaned in.
What was it? What incredible economic insight was running through one of our greatest economic minds on that cold London Saturday. Ricardo did write a letter complaining about a portrait that he had done of him, which has now become the image that everyone knows. If you know Ricardo, you've seen this image.
If you don't know him, of course you haven't. Yes. Ricardo was just complaining about a portrait. Oh, but not the quality.
The problem appeared to be that he didn't have the portrait yet. I can read you the exact sentence if you wish. We need to hear the sentence. He said, it is nearly two years since it was painted.
And I have never yet seen it at my own house. I've been sitting on the show that technological breakthroughs that brought the price of portraits down and democratized the self-help. Oh, the fickle capricious groundhog gods. What are you going to do?
Truth be told, it was harder than we expected to find something that happened on February 2 that changed the economy forever. We started grasping at straws a little bit. Yeah, we were like, I don't know. February 2 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oh, look at that. There was a February 2016 opening bell run by Miss Piggy. Bears, bulls, who needs them Wall Street? You've gotten more.
Unfortunately, that was on February 1. So that we can't do. Then we were like, OK, the iron brand birthday story was a no. But look who else was born on February 2.
Shagita. You cannot argue with the economic impact of this. I'm just feeling it's funny. Unfortunately, we also could not argue our way into a Shakira interview.
So then we called the next person on the Wikipedia birthday list who seemed like they might actually take our phone call. Yeah, my name is Adam Christopher. I am an author. I don't know what to say.
I've never done this kind of thing before. So Adam, he's the New Zealand-born sci-fi writer. I hope you don't mind that you are a backup plan to Shakira, who is also born on February 2. Yes, my friend.
Bye, bye. Every year I wish you had your birthday on Twitter. She's never responded. This might be the year.
This is the true year. I'm going to say it. Anyway, yeah. Adam did get his first book deal on his birthday, which technically an economic event that happened on February.
All right, that's fair. But look, it was not easy to find something. And when we thought all hope was lost to saw it, it was a tiny thing. It was administrative paperwork, really, from February 2, 1897.
That I believe we could argue change the world forever. And made it more delicious after the break. This week on up first, President Trump heads to China on the agenda, Taiwan, AI, and the war with Iran, a close Chinese ally, and trade partner. One big question will Trump ask China to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
We are reporting from Beijing on a week of major news that affects the world and your wallet. On up first, listen on the NPR app or wherever. You get your podcasts. Our Groundhog Day quest had led us to one story and one place.
Today we've got Butter Pecan. We've got Golden Vanilla. We've got Fruity Pebbles Cheesecake. Yes, an ice cream shop.
Happy Day, the Zert Factory in Pittsburgh. This is Galen Moore, Sr. His son, the junior, owns the shop. Galen Sr.
manages it. We've got Funfetti. We've got Banana Cream Pie. We are here because 126 Groundhog Days ago to the day, the US issued a patent to an inventor who lived mere miles from this ice cream shop.
His invention? The ice cream, mold, and dish are, also known as one of the very first ice cream scoops. Which we explain to Galen Moore. Oh, wow, I'm not at all.
Why do you think you've never heard about him before? I asked a good question. I don't want to use the word as inconsequential, but something that's in such a regular use as an ice cream scooper you don't ever think of as, hey, where did this originate from? Where did it come from?
It's such a simple but yet necessary invention. Simple yet necessary invention? Do I like it? Let's give it a try.
Hello, and welcome to Planet Money, I'm Erica Barris. And I'm Kenny Malone today on the show, how the humble ice cream mold and dish are, maybe arguably, changed the world forever. Yeah, not cut off yet. Let's do it.
The year is 1896. Alfred Crowley is a 30-year-old black man, born in Virginia the year after the Civil War. He migrates to Pittsburgh, starts working as a porter at a drug store in a hotel. The hotel serves ice cream, and Alfred notices that the way they serve the ice cream seems annoying.
Messy. Yeah, people were apparently taking two spoons, normal spoons and jamming one into the ice cream and scraping it off with the other spoon. I mean, caveman behavior, Alfred probably thought. And so Alfred designed a scoopy-looking thing with a mechanical handle.
When you squeeze the handle, it activates a kind of scraper that ejects the ice cream out of the scoop. It was the first ice cream scoop. OK, coffee out here. Many places claim that this is the first, but there do seem to be at least one or two other patents before this one.
But one of those still required a spoon to empty out the scoop. The other one's closer, but maybe a little less elegant. So we're going to argue Alfred's was probably maybe the first truly modern scooper. Whatever, don't worry too much about it.
Let's keep going. Alfred Crawley's patent was approved on February 2, 1897. Aroundhog Day. Hi, Rika.
Hi there. Can you hear me? I can hear you fine. Can you hear me?
I can. Adam Mossoff, law professor at George Mason University, patent expert, and knows a lot about how patents get turned into actual money. You know, patents are property rights. And they, like all property rights, might lead to great success or may not.
Property rights. And Adam gave us this comparison that I find really useful. He said, you know, a patent is just an idea, sketched out, and then legally tied to the inventor. And that really is kind of like somebody who says, you know, just owns a piece of vacant land.
Yeah, Adam says vacant land isn't inherently a business. It's owner would have to figure out what to do with it. They can sit and wait for the land to grow in value. They can lease it out and become a landlord.
They can build a factory on it. They can build an office building on it. They can build a home. And then they can sell that home.
And if you think about the patent version of this, let's say you get a patent for an ice cream scoop. You still have to figure out how to turn that into a business. You could manufacture the thing yourself and sell it. You could lease your patent to a manufacturer.
You could pull on sell your patent. Which brings us back to ice cream, mold, and dish or inventor, Alfred Crawley. Now, reportedly within days of getting his patent, Alfred had received letters from firms in Chicago, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, quote, offering large inducements to him should he wish to sell his patent outright or on a royalty. But that's basically where our knowledge ends.
It's unclear if he ended up selling the patent, if he made lots of money, no money. We really just don't know for sure. What we do know for sure is that the idea of the ice cream scoop freaking rules Erica. Yes, it does.
And as an expert at a mass off the grade, it is definitely an upgrade over a pair of spoons. Yes. Is it possible to overstate the productivity gains, derived from the invention of the ice cream scoop? I don't believe it's possible to overstate it.
Because this is the key part of all great innovations, right? Is that they contribute, right, to these little efficiencies in our life. And these little efficiencies in the economy. Back at the Pittsburgh ice cream shop, it was time to figure out just how much the humble ice cream scoop changed the economy forever.
And we had devised a little experiment for shop manager, Galen Moore, the senior. Would you say you're the best scooper who works here? Just comes out here. So tell us the truth.
I would say I'm the most efficient. Which is perfect, because efficiency is what we are here to test, specifically labor productivity, which is a technical economic term, meaning output per worker. And the factors of this, they are, of course, things like the worker's skills, management practices, and technological change. That's what we need to test.
The technological change, that is Galen's ice cream scoop. OK. OK. Well, I have two tools with me.
I brought the tool that Galen will have to use for our experiment. From my back pocket, I pull out what someone serving up ice cream might have used before the scooper was invented. A spoon, a tablespoon from my kitchen. I did not realize the spoon was going to be important.
Oh, the spoon is a big part of this. OK. I already know how sloppy this is going to be. I'm going to actually work gloves.
Gloves, that's five extra seconds. These spoons are already cutting into productivity. Now, with his modern scoop, Galen can make 11 scoops of ice cream in 30 seconds. By the way, the scoop has advanced since that earlier version.
The newer ones don't need that scoop ejector piece. No, but look, any scoop is going to be faster than the old spoons. But to calculate our productivity gains, we do need to know how much faster they are. And so we stand in front of the hardest ice cream to scoop, butter pecan.
Galen, step the clay holes in my kitchen spoon, and I start a 30 second timer. Three, two, one, go. Scooping, one, it's two. 30, one, go on.
Because I can fill the spoon bending already. The spoon may not make it. In 30 seconds of spooning, I guess we'll call it, Galen makes five possible looking ice cream balls of butter pecan. My kitchen spoon does not survive.
The spoon's dead. The spoon's dead. Now, five spoon scoops is not even half as much as Galen can do with a real ice cream scoop. That is an incredible increase in labor productivity, but surely Galen's business benefits from.
Could you imagine running this business without the ice cream scooper? If my only alternative was a spoon, I seriously doubt that anybody would be an ice cream business. I cannot imagine running this business without the ice cream scooper. You'd need more people.
Because it'd be virtually impossible to keep up with the demands. Impossible to keep up with demand. Kettie, it seems pretty clear to me that we have made the case that the ice cream mold and dish are changed the economy forever. Couldn't agree, Mar-Erika.
And if only there were one last person we could call to confirm whether or not the ice cream scoop is, say, I don't know, one of the maybe top 50 inventions that shaped the modern economy? Of course. I am the author of 50 inventions that shaped the modern economy and a whole bunch of other things. This is front of the show, Tim Harford.
Yeah. Well, Tim, we've got the book here. And I see the plow. Yeah.
Is he's plastics in here? I see. Like Bob? Am I missing?
Am I missing ice cream scooper? Well, I really love the humble inventions that people overlook, that the pencil, the brick, paper, paper. Nobody gives paper. Everyone talks about the printing press.
Nobody gives paper enough credit. But yeah, you missed ice cream scoop because it's not there. Yeah, Tim's not buying this. There are economy changing inventions.
And some of the economists that study this stuff, they call those inventions general, purpose technologies. Yeah, and those technologies tend to have three main characteristics. Number one, they work their way into lots of nooks and crannies of the economy. Number two, they themselves can easily be improved upon.
Yeah. And then number three, those inventions also improve other parts of the economy. And we tell Tim, look, ice cream scoops are everywhere. They've definitely been improved upon, and they make the food economy better.
I mean, don't get me wrong, that's good. And if I wanted to scoop ice cream, I'd be happier if I had an ice cream scoop than if I was just working with a regular spoon. But I'm not sure I'm going to call this a general purpose technology. I mean, it's not really everywhere in the way that say the nuts and bolts are everywhere.
Or the literal nuts and bolts? Yeah, like literal nuts and bolts or the wheel. Or it's not a wheel. It's like a high bar.
Yeah. Or hinges or ball bearings is another one. They're all kinds of places where you don't expect them. Whereas ice cream scoops, where are they?
They're pretty much exactly where you expect them. They're kind of in spoon drawers and ice cream stores. And that's about it. OK.
But Tim, imagine a hot Pittsburgh day lying out of the ice cream door. If the ice cream scoop lets you serve twice as many customers, which then theoretically helps the ice cream shop make more money, which then theoretically allows the shop to charge us less per scoop, if the ice cream scoop theoretically gives us more and cheaper ice cream, tell us how this is not the 51st invention that shaped the modern economy. Well, I mean, everything you've said is true. It's not exactly like the light bulb is it because like, oh, looks like we lost him there.
Probably this is a bad connection. I'm sure what he was going to say is the ice cream scoops not the light bulb. But the ice cream scoop is really important because without it, would we have nearly as many stand alone ice cream parlors? I think not.
And so in conclusion, in the aftermath of the Civil War, in the midst of the full-fledged industrial revolution, as the gears of innovation shifted, but it's possibly one of the greatest inventions ever received as patent on Brownhog Day 1897. The ice cream mold and disher invented by Alfred Crawley tells us so much about patents, about labor productivity, about dare I say who we are as human beings. And Groundhog Day after Groundhog Day, the ice cream scoop has made our lives so much sweeter. Come on.
Thanks for trying, Planet Money. I think you're going to have to do this again next year. And I guess I'm going to have to read this again. Here we go.
That's right. With Chuck Checkers, it's Groundhog Day. Get up and check that hog. Come here, Groundhog.
Oh, sorry Elsa. Let's do the credit, Erica. Do you listeners happen to know any weird hidden stories that happened on a Groundhog Day that also happened to have even a vague economic angle that we can spin? Well, we're definitely going to need a lot of those for next year.
Our future selves would love it if you email those ideas over to planetmoney at npr.org. That's planetmoney at npr.org. Today's show was produced by Dave Blanchard and edited by Sally Helm. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez and Gillie Moon.
And fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Planet Money's acting executive producer is Jess Zhang. Special thanks to Dennis Tucker, Heidi Wastweet, and James Traw. Tim Harford's podcast is called Coshinary Tales.
I will not vouch for any ice cream scoop opinions he has on that show, that's all I'm saying. I'm Erica Bares. I'm Kenny Malone. This is NPR.
Thanks for listening. This week on the NPR Politics podcast, President Trump in China, the latest on a summit that was billed as a major meeting on trade in AI, being overshadowed by the war in Iran, a close ally, and trade partner of China. What's happening with tariffs and how is it affecting consumers? On the NPR Politics podcast.
Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.